


Craving Burning Lotós: Minami-hen

by einsKai



Category: IDOLiSH7 (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Promare, Collaboration, Drama, High-School Trio, M/M, Minor Violence, Music, Promare (2019) Spoilers, Promare-typical Racism, Strangers to Lovers, not a retelling of the movie or anything though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23579509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/einsKai/pseuds/einsKai
Summary: “You should take me on a ride. I could give you a private concert… just kidding.”“Sure, I’ll take you somewhere someday."Idle chatter that would never lead anywhere. After all the worlds they were living in were completely different.
Relationships: Midou Torao/Natsume Minami
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11





	Craving Burning Lotós: Minami-hen

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Craving Burning Lotós: Torao-hen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23578129) by [ShionsTear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShionsTear/pseuds/ShionsTear). 



> Welcome!
> 
> This is a little (big, don't lie) project that Shion and I have been working on for the past two months. 
> 
> It was a lot of fun to work on this together, and I think a lot of cool things came out of it as well. (Just an example: "Ew, cringe", Minami said.)
> 
> Thank you [Elif](https://instagram.com/elif.doodles?igshid=1n0g3x7hhpbxr) for the crazy awesome cover art for this fic :D
> 
> And now have fun reading, as long as you don't care about Promare spoilers. You have been warned. 
> 
> \- Kai

The light didn’t flicker before going out.

Minami got up from his spot on the worn carpet where he had been working. The light was best there, in front of their kitchen’s radiator. Sadly the single lightbulb that dangled from the ceiling wasn’t the best when it came to evenly lighting the room, but they made do. They didn’t really have a choice.

But even though they had only swapped it out a month ago it was broken now? Without a sign of warning? He had figured that it’d last longer until it broke, despite it being a cheap one.

With a sigh he stretched out his hand to find the wall and feel his way to the door. Some paint chipped off and scratched his palm, but he ignored the prick and opened the door.

“Mimi-san, the bathroom got dark”, a sudden voice made him flinch.

“Yotsuba-san”, he greeted the other. “Sorry, it is too dark here, I did not see you.”

“Yeah I know. The light ain’t working here either.”

“Does it work anywhere?”

“Dunno, Isumin’s sleeping so he hasn’t said anything.”

“We should not wake him”, Minami decided. “He needs every ounce of sleep he can get. Let me see if I can do anything.”

“’Kay”, Tamaki mumbled, and Minami felt him move past him. “I’m just gonna. Hold onto you. So you don’t get lost in the dark. Yeah?”

Minami smiled to himself. Tamaki got scared easily, so this sudden darkness was probably really bad for him. Yet he still tried showing how strong he was. And wasn’t that his true strength?

“Thank you, Yotsuba-san. I can really use your assistance.”

Together they walked the few steps towards the exit of their apartment. The stairway still had light burning, so at least it wasn’t a total power outage, not like that hadn’t happened before. Minami looked around. It was late, so no other tenants were around, but when he turned back to the door, he saw a notice stuck to the stained wall next to their doorbell.

Tamaki and Haruka had made the sign with their names on it. They put a lot of effort into something as simple as a doorbell sign, maybe because finally they had found a place to seriously stay, even though it wasn’t cheap. Tamaki worked long shifts in the factory every day and came home with sore muscles. Haruka was an errand boy, and his old bicycle didn’t support him driving up the steeper roads his routes led him to, so he wasn’t better off. Minami himself went out to play his songs and get a few coins tossed into the guitar case at his feet.

Neither of these jobs were breadwinning, but together they could survive, and at least have a place to stay. Even though they had to share a bed, and the water from the tap sometimes turned dirty colours, having a roof above their heads was worth it.

All that came crashing down before him as he looked at the letters screaming at him.

“Electricity bill not paid”, it read on the notice taped to the wall.

“Yotsuba-san”, Minami said. Tamaki still hadn’t let go of him. “We paid our bills on time this month, right?”

“Yeah, you always get the money together super early. You only counted it a few days ago.”

“I did… But then why does this notice say that we did not pay?”

“Huh?! It says that? But why?”

Sometimes he forgot that Tamaki had trouble reading.

“I cannot tell, Yotsuba-san. But I think we will need to light candles until I can talk to our landlord tomorrow.”

Tamaki inhaled sharply, and it would have been a comical loud gasp, if the feeling of shock behind it hadn’t been as sincere as Tamaki himself.

“But Mimi-san…!”

Minami put a hand on Tamaki’s arm and ushered him back into their apartment. Closing the door behind them he leaned in and whispered.

“I know. I _know_ that we are not allowed to light fires. I know that just like everyone else does. But Yotsuba-san, I _need_ to finish this piece today. It is just a hunch, but… tonight is something special. If I finish the song, it will become special as well.”

“…”, Tamaki looked like he understood, and yet he obviously wasn’t happy with what Minami said.

“So just go lay down next to Isumi-san and get some shut-eye, yes?”, Minami continued. “I will handle this. Nothing will happen, I promise.”

“…okay. Okay, yeah, sure. But Mimi-san. Really, promise me to be careful. Super-mega-ultra-extra careful, okay?”

“No worries, Yotsuba-san. I will.”

Tamaki nodded, determination in his voice. “It’s a promise.”

By now Minami’s eyes had kind of adjusted to the dark, even though the crescent moon shining in through the almost blind glass of the window was the only actual source of light. In the dark he could see Tamaki’s face, filled with trust and nothing else.

He never wanted to betray either of his two companions.

When he heard the noise of the bedroom door closing, he relaxed a bit. Going back to his papers, he sat down on the carpet again, and reached to his left, to rummage through the contents of a drawer.

His fingers closed around one of the cylindrical white wax sticks and he pulled it out of the mess. They hadn’t even been living here for very long, how had one of their drawers already gotten this messy?

He wasn’t allowed to hold a candle by law. Actually, he probably wasn’t allowed to _own_ a candle, or even be in the same room as one.

Walking fire hazards as they were, he thought when he let the flame inside of him hum and come to life, the Burnish, as they were called now, just couldn’t be let into contact with fire related items. Even though it felt like a necessity for them to be close to fire, like breathing, or singing.

Minami lit the candle with his fire, and a calming, warm light filled the room. It was already better than the lightbulb, and Minami felt the warmth of the candle, the living flickering of the fire, its singing, its story, seeping into him, energizing him more than any energy supplement ever could.

He let his fragmented self mend together for just a few seconds. Then, with the signature click of the ballpoint pen he found abandoned on the streets of Shotokyo last week, his thoughts came to life on the paper.

Immersed into his work, he let himself go, let himself relax into the process of writing down a song of flames, a song of _himself_ that would hopefully make sense after it left his mind. And the more he wrote, the more he thought that this was a masterpiece, and that it was only possible because of the gently flickering candle next to him.

The commotion in the hallway only registered in the back of his mind.

“They’re in here, sir!”, the underslung landlord’s filthy voice wormed its way through his ears into his brain. “Oh lord! They’re gonna burn down my place! My beautiful apartments… I can’t bear it anymore! Please extinguish the fire!”

Weird, Minami thought. Except for his small candle there was no fire near here. He would know it, he would feel it, that certain pull towards fires that all of the Burnish felt in the very core of their beings.

“The doorbell isn’t working”, a voice he had never heard reached him. It was closer than the landlord, yet still muffled, as if they were directly in front of the door.

“Yes, they didn’t pay their damn electricity bill. Damn Burnish and their entitlement. _I’m_ not gonna pay for their expenses.”

A fist banged against the door.

Minami flinched.

They meant him. The voices meant his apartment, his fire, his candle, as small as it was.

They had found him.

Minami forced his hands to stop shaking. Deep breaths. The flame grew slightly bigger, feeding on his fear, his nerves fuelling the heat.

With a pang of regret he blew out the candle, extinguishing the song that had been filling his mind. After just a second, the thin grey smoke and the fading smoulder of the wick were the only signs that there had been any fire. As soon as it had cooled enough that he was sure it wouldn’t start a fire in the drawer, he hid it away again.

If he had been like the people knocking on his door right now, his hands would’ve been sweating, but Minami wasn’t like them. If he had been like them, then his existence wouldn’t be threatened by a candle flame. The fire inside of him burned away any trace of liquid, evaporating the nervous cold sweat that would otherwise make his hands feel clammy.

He closed his hand around the doorknob with a small inhale, hoping it would grant him courage.

Light spilled in from outside, when he opened the door. With a quick step he positioned himself in the doorframe. If anyone tried to hurt the other two, they’d have to go through him first. His heart thrummed in his chest, the rhythm resounding loudly in his ears. He hoped none of it showed on his face.

“Whoa, sorry”, a tall man clad in the uniform of Burning Rescue backed off in surprise. He looked Minami up and down, as if he was analysing him. “Good evening.”

“Good evening”, Minami swallowed. “How can I help…?”

“This is him! The criminal! Arrest him, he started a fire in my house!”, his landlord’s voice hit him from far away.

But Minami only saw the uniform of the Burning Rescue, and his thoughts were running wild. Fighting the urge to dash forward and run far, far away, or just shut the door and barricade himself in what had been his safe haven for the past few months, he held onto the doorframe. He would get through this. Everything would turn out fine.

“Good evening, sir”, The third man outside said. He looked strait-laced, like he was always strictly following all rules. “We have received a call from the landlord that a fire has been sighted inside of your apartment. I know it is late and we excuse the trouble, but would it be possible for us to check inside? If it happens to be a false alarm, we shall excuse ourselves quickly again”, he explained calmly.

“As you can see there is no fire in this apartment”, Minami said. “Or do you see any smoke or flames?”

“While that might be true for what we can see from here, we would need to enter and check. Please?”, he continued.

Minami resigned himself to his fate. They shouldn’t be able to find the candle. He stepped aside. “My roommates are sleeping”, he said. “Please use caution as to not wake them. They both have work tomorrow morning.”

“Understood”, the second firefighter nodded, lowering his voice. Well, at least they wouldn’t wake Haruka and Tamaki then. It was for the better, they didn’t need to be in mortal fear first thing after being woken up in the middle of the night.

“Pardon the intrusion”, the first firefighter whispered as he walked past Minami and into his apartment. He lit a flashlight, the bright beam of light cutting the dark and revealing fragments of their apartment. When he found the closed door to the bedroom, he turned to look at Minami. His questioning gaze asked if this was where Tamaki and Haruka were sleeping. When Minami nodded, he walked on and entered the kitchen.

There was no other room but the bathroom to enter, but Minami still felt his heart stop slightly.

“Did you see anything, Midou-san?”, the second one, who had entered the kitchen as well, asked and came to a halt next to the stove.

“Nope”, the man apparently called Midou-san said.

Minami relaxed slightly. That was right. There was nothing incriminating about the kitchen. They would leave again soon. It was alright.

But the firefighter named Midou-san wasn’t done yet. He sniffed.

The smoke. Did it still linger? His heartbeat picked up again, blood rushing through his ears creating a song much different from before.

“Well, I don’t see any fire in here, Mister Landlord”, Midou-san’s voice got through to him. Did he… really not notice? Or was he trying to help…?

Minami didn’t know if he _wanted_ help from a firefighter.

With crossed arms the firefighter planted himself in front of the landlord, who of course had also needed to squeeze himself into the tiny kitchen. It was normally cramped when the three of them ate, but now with two firefighters with their equipment and the all but slim landlord inside it seemed to burst at the seams. If he hadn’t been occupied with a near-existential crisis, Minami would’ve felt bad for his kitchen.

The addressed landlord took a pointed sniff. Minami heard the snot in his nose move. He shivered.

“Oh! But don’t you smell this?”, the landlord said. “I can smell it…”, he moved along the cupboards and towards the drawer where Minami kept the candles. “Right over here!”, he pointed at the second drawer from the bottom, as precise as clockwork, as if he was a clairvoyant.

Minami felt hatred boil up inside of him but kept his flame from exploding into the landlord’s face.

He had to stay calm. There was no way he actually knew, right?

“Well…”, Midou-san shrugged. “Not everyone’s a master chef. Food can get burned.”

He was actually trying to help. Minami was baffled. He hadn’t expected to ever meet a firefighter trying to stand up for him.

But the landlord didn’t stop pointing at the drawer.

The other firefighter sighed but went to open the drawer. “May I?”, he asked, hand already on the handle.

“Do you not need a search warrant to rummage through my personal belongings?”, Minami was grasping for straws.

“Hogwash!”, the landlord said. “No search warrants are needed for you lot. I looked that up!”

“I am afraid he is right. We are legally allowed to if there is a possibility for a fire hazard. You may find the official statement on the government’s website. Please excuse me, I will open the drawer now”, the second firefighter said. So there hadn’t even been any chance of him not opening the drawer. Why did he even ask? It was all so pointless. Same with referring to a website. Burnish didn’t have the means of buying electronics like computers or smartphones, as they were very expensive, and internet cafés were usually secured as to guarantee that Burnish couldn’t enter. How was he supposed to look at the website?

Minami watched silently as his drawer was opened.

The shine of the flashlights revealed the waxen white of the candles.

“I knew it!!”, the landlord yelled.

“Keep it down!”, Midou-san shushed the landlord. “Hah…”

“Candles”, the other firefighter noted. “And it seems one of them has been lit recently.”

“So I can evict them now, right!?”, Minami saw spit flying when the landlord yelled loudly enough to put a starting airplane to shame. “I can finally throw these dirty fire-rats out of my building?”

Minami felt the fire inside him rage. There really was no need for the landlord to call them names. There really was no need for him to kick them out. They were paying tenants. They never did anything wrong.

A different heat burned on his skin, one that told him of the hatred radiating off his landlord.

“...yes, you can, you so—", Midou-san didn’t sound very happy, but Minami didn’t have the energy to spare him a glance.

“That is true”, the firefighter was interrupted by his colleague before he could finish his insult. Great. Maybe that insult would’ve made him feel better.

Minami was furious. Minami was despairing. Minami actually really didn’t know what he was feeling.

Through clenched teeth he mumbled. “You knew, didn’t you. You went into our apartment and snooped around, didn’t you. You just wanted us to leave. This is also why you said we did not pay the electricity bill, even though we did.”

A noise from the kitchen door let Minami flinch. Haruka was standing in the hallway and blinked at the group of people sleepily.

“Isumi-san, you should go back to slee—"

“Eh?”, Haruka said. “What’s going on?”

“Very well”, the second firefighter seemed to be getting ready to leave. “We shall head back for tonight. We will send you a notice as soon as possible and ask you to comply with it, uhm…?”, he looked at Minami like he was expecting something else from him. After he had already taken so much.

It took him a second to understand that it was his name he was asking.

“Natsume”, Minami said. He was close to just shutting down and starting to cry, but now that Haruka was here, he didn’t want to show any weakness. “Natsume Minami.”

“Thank you, Natsume-san”, the firefighter nodded and turned towards the landlord. Minami noticed that he seemed very young. Maybe around the age that Haruka and Tamaki were. Was that an appropriate age for a firefighter? Of Burning Rescue, nonetheless? “May I ask you to accompany us? We have to compile a report and would like for you to provide some information.”

The landlord agreed readily. He seemed overjoyed to finally get rid of them.

“Very well.”, the firefighter was on his way out. “Midou-san?”

“...yeah”, Midou-san nodded. He lingered behind in the kitchen for a few heartbeats too long. Minami heard him leave, but then stop in his tracks. “I’m sorry.” he said.

A few heavy steps from the boots coming with the uniform.

The door shut behind him.

“Appreciated, but unhelpful… Midou-san”, Minami mumbled. His legs lost their strength and he slumped down on the floor.

“Minami!”, Haruka was at his side immediately. “Are you okay? What was that about? Why was Izumi here?”

“Huh? What was that about Iorin?”, Tamaki asked. He stepped out of the bedroom.

Minami felt horrible. Not only had they just lost their home, it was also his fault. And he had just promised Tamaki too.

“I am sorry”, he said softly. He barely managed to conceal the quiver in his voice. “Yotsuba-san, I truly am sorry.”

“Izumi is with Burning Rescue”, Haruka said. “Did you know that?”

“Nah, last time I saw him we were literally kids.”

Haruka nodded.

“Wait, Burning Rescue was here?!”, Tamaki asked. “Did they…?”

Minami let his hair fall into his face, unable to face the others.

“The landlord knew we had candles. He needed firefighters to write a report on us so he could evict us.”

Silence.

“Well, it had to happen again sooner or later, right?”, Haruka said after a while.

“Yeah, as if we could have a nice apartment this close to the border of Shotokyo”, Tamaki mumbled. “Don’t worry Mimi-san. It’s not your fault that the landlord is a piece of shit.”

“He’s right Minami”, Haruka said. “Just come to bed with us for now, okay? We’ll think about this tomorrow.”

Minami swallowed on the lump in his throat, but it didn’t budge.

“Alright”, he whispered, and if his face was wet after all, the boys pretending to sleep on either side of him didn’t comment on it.

When Minami stepped up to the door with three half-filled bags hanging over his shoulder and his guitar case on his back, he heard a scream.

“It’s fine, it’s fine”, he heard a familiar voice shushing the person who screamed. “You’re alright, okay? It won’t hurt much longer.”

“Is she going to be okay?”, a third voice asked.

“Yes, Miss, in just a few minutes”, the second person said. “Wait here for a sec, I’ll get some supplies.”

Minami let himself in. The door to the house was always open.

It was a one-story concrete building, of the kind that was cheap and easy to build. Many areas of Shotokyo had already swapped out these provisional houses that they had built after the Great World Burn 30 years ago, but here, in the inner ring of the “slums”, they were still prevalent.

The owner, Nikaido Yamato, was walking through the hallway when Minami entered.

“Hey Mina”, he greeted him, his mind clearly not on him. “I have a patient right now; do you mind helping out?”

Minami dropped the bags next to the guitar case and closed the door behind him.

“Of course.”

“Perfect. She got into an accident at a factory”, the mention of a factory let Minami’s heart clench. Tamaki was at one too right now. He hoped he was okay. “It wasn’t much, just some contusions, the fire took care of that. There’s something else though...”

Nikaido Yamato was a Burnish with a degree. While not unusual among the older members of the Burnish, it was unusual for the younger ones to even get the chance to pursue a degree, or career, as most young Burnish didn’t make it through high school, not speaking of college.

Burnish didn’t get scholarships – if a Burnish got _any_ kind of education at all they were very lucky. At most they got taught basic maths and reading, and then they were sent to the factory to work. It was hard work, and Minami was sure that nobody actually wanted to work there, but if they didn’t, they would starve to death. For the moment, complying was the lesser evil.

Yamato was different. His mutation had manifested right when he was about to start college to get a medical degree and take over his father’s pharmacy. He had kept it a secret, let nobody find out, and fought tooth and nail to graduate. He successfully hid it, until the end of college, until now actually.

A few times a week he came to the slums and helped in cases where the fires couldn’t burn away pain and injury.

Nobody actually ever got sick, as bacteria couldn’t withstand their bodies’ high temperatures, or if they did the fire targeted the sickness and cauterized it.

But some things the fire couldn’t do. That was where Yamato came in.

“The fracture was uneven. It healed her, but there’s a malalignment”, the pharmacist in the role of back-alley doctor explained.

Minami nodded. He had seen things like this before. After all it was how he had met Tamaki, and by extension, Haruka.

“I just need you to hold her legs down. I don’t want to be kicked, and I already gave her some painkillers, but it won’t be enough to make it disappear completely”, Yamato rummaged to one of the boxes that he had gradually filled with smuggled drugs and other supplies from the pharmacy. Nothing much, just a painkiller here, and some bandages there… Nobody would notice, or so he always said.

He pulled out a leather strip, and waved Minami to follow him. A young woman, barely Minami’s age laid on the thin sheet on the mattress that functioned as Yamato’s doctor’s couch. Another knelt next to her, holding her hand. Minami couldn’t see the other arm from where he was standing, but he assumed that it was the bad one. He took position at the lower end.

“Take this”, Yamato said and gave her the leather strip. The women looked confused but took it. “Miss, I need you to hold your girlfriend’s hand now, okay? The good one. Yes, like that, perfect. Don’t let go, both of you. Try not to hurt her though.”

“Why would I–"

“As for the leather, bite on it. You’ll need it.”

She complied after being interrupted and dug her teeth into the leather strip. Minami gripped her legs, right above the ankles and hoped that his strength would be enough.

“I’m going to break your arm now”, Yamato announced, and before anyone could react, he _did_.

The sickening crack of bones breaking resounded in the air like the snap of a whip.

Minami should have looked away, but something prevented him from doing so. He did his best to control the legs, her muscles convulsing as she tried to flee and get away from the pain. Her eyes were wide open, tears pooling at the corners. Her scream was muffled by the leather, that Minami thought might tear with how hard she was biting it, but her girlfriend’s scream mixed with hers, and resounded in the room stridently. Their joined hands looked like there would be more bones snapping if Yamato didn’t finish up soon.

The doctor was working quickly, his flames lapping around his glasses as he lost the concentration of keeping them in in favour of fixing the bones as fast as he could, so that this time, the fire could heal them properly.

It only took seconds, but it felt like hours, holding down the poor woman’s legs as Yamato and her fire fixed her arm.

“Done”, Yamato said then, after the screams had faded to whimpers, and finally ceased to heavy breathing.

Minami let go of the legs, and the patient sat up.

“It’s really fixed”, she said after carefully flexing her arm. “I don’t even feel pain anymore!”

Her girlfriend flung her arms around her neck. “I’m so glad”, she sobbed. Her hand was still red, but the marks were already fading. “How can we ever repay you doctor?”

“I don’t take payment”, Yamato said and shrugged. “I’m good knowing you’ll get to live another day.”

Minami hid a smile. It was what Yamato always said when someone offered to pay. There was no way any of his patients could actually pay, so he made sure to always remind them of what was really important.

Survival.

It only took a few minutes for the women to leave and for Yamato to change the sheet.

“So, what brings you here? With the whole kit and caboodle too?”

“We were evicted”, Minami said. “This is all our belongings. I am here to ask if you would be as kind as to let us sleep here until we find a new place.”

Yamato looked at him for a long second.

Minami felt his look pierce him right into his soul. In another world, maybe Yamato would have been a very good mind reader. In this world he just made the best back-alley doctor that any Burnish could ever wish for.

“Sure, sure”, the bespectacled pharmacist said then. “It’s not like I sleep here. And remember, when we’re in the slums you gotta call me ‘doctor’, alright? ‘Onii-san’ is fine too though—"

“I will _not_ call you Onii-san, doctor”, Minami said, but there was no bite to his words. He was just too glad that he knew a man as kind and ready to help as Yamato.

Minami’s guitar case next to the entry fell over, probably tilted slightly by one of the women who just left. The worn handle seemed to glim hopefully.

Every time he left the outer ring of the slums and entered the surrounding Shotokyo to mingle with the masses of people he knew feared and shunned him and his kind, Minami felt uneasiness darting around the base of his spine.

He was wearing his least worn clothes, an oversized jacket that he didn’t need because he didn’t get cold, but that fact made him look inconspicuous, or so Haruka had said when he had brought that jacket back. Someone had ordered it and apparently didn’t like it. Instead of sending it back, they had told the delivery boy to ‘just keep it’. Not really common practise, but even in this new-born city there were people living in luxury. Haruka had thought that the beige colour would fit Minami and had given it to him. The dark jeans were stylishly ripped, unless one looked closely, because then one would’ve noticed that they were actually riddled with holes from wear.  
For shoes he had been glad that he had managed to get some that actually fit him. For a resident of Shotokyo the thin fabric of them wouldn’t be very useful in winter, but Minami didn’t have that problem, so he wore them with pride, even though a while ago one of the shoelaces had snapped and now they were of mismatched, one still the original, faded maroon, the newer one terribly teal.

Around him the city life was bustling. People were walking from and to work. Lunch period was busy. A perfect time for him, and that was why he was here. Businessmen with rolled up sleeves sat on stairs, enjoying their lunch in the sun, and cafés and restaurants at the plaza were especially busy.

The empty space in front of the running fountain looked desperate to be filled by him.

Minami closed his hands around the pick dangling from his bracelet. He had gotten this one from Tamaki, and he loved it the most out of all items that he owned. The thin leather strip was made from an old belt that Tamaki found, and the boy had asked Yamato to help him get a wooden pick with a small hole drilled through it. Even though he didn’t need a pick for all his songs, it was good that he could let go of it and run in case it was necessary, because it was tied to the bracelet.

Putting down the guitar case in front of him, he prepared for his show. He would première his newest song here and now.

Usually Minami wrote two kinds of songs. One that could be sung everywhere, and the other that could only be played for Burnish.

This one was different. It was obviously about the struggles of Burnish, but if the listener wasn’t Burnish themselves, they wouldn’t notice.

Minami took a deep breath and strummed the first chord.

“ _in this first and last of nights  
we scale the peaks lethally high  
warnings spoken ring in our ears  
never to go, never to climb!  
mountains too treacherous  
we’d never return  
to the stifling home so bleak  
clinical maze, gold-plated cage_

 _never did the three of us  
feel this freedom in our lungs  
watched over by the stars  
infinite celestials  
speckled with stardust_”

Two children stopped and turned around to listen to him. Minami hoped they’d never turn out to hate Burnish.

The first coins were thrown into his guitar case.

He continued.

“ _the view is magnificent  
tops of trees long left behind  
rock glistens opal under ice  
we climb towards our high  
outrunning all of our restraints  
sky so close we lose our minds  
and the quaking galaxy sends  
ripples through the fabric of the universe_”

The closer his fictional, his sung, alter ego got to the peak, the braver Minami got. His breaths got deeper; his voice got fuller. His fingers danced along the neck of the guitar, improvising a new melody right after the second chorus.

He attracted more and more eyes. He saw some of the stair-dwelling men’s tap their feet or nod their heads.

Some more coins, irregular beat. Hopefully it would be enough at the end of the day.

The last stanza. The climax of the three caged people’s story.

“ _under that ribbon of cosmos-green  
like the flavour of coffee stays  
long after the last drop  
stuck to out tongues is the taste of liberty  
we sing our requiem to the trees  
to the rocks and the clouds and the sky  
as the mother star rises  
we descend in the east_

 _never did the three of us  
feel this freedom in our lungs  
watched over by the stars  
infinite celestials  
speckled with stardust_”

Minami closed his song, opened his eyes again, and smiled upon the small applause he got. The children who had stopped earlier, came forward and threw coins into his guitar case. Their parents must have given them some money for him.

“Thank you”, he said, careful not to let the excitement and singing affect his controlled breathing.

When he looked up again, he spotted an unfortunately familiar face.

“…oh, I… uh…”, the firefighter from yesterday was standing in front of him, clutching his wallet like it was an anchor. “I…”

Minami’s eyes darted from the firefighter Midou-san’s hands to his face and back. Why was he holding a wallet? Shouldn’t he send him away from the safe space for ‘normal’ people? Wasn’t that his job? Minami felt how his muscles stiffened from the adrenaline. Should he grab the guitar case and run?

“Sorry”, he seemed to shake off the stupor that he had been in, and let a bill drop into his guitar case. Minami watched the fireproof paper flutter down and land on top of the coins those children had given him. The firefighter didn’t manage to look him in the eyes properly. “I just really liked your song and wanted to… to thank you for it.”

Minami took a deep breath to calm himself. He didn’t seem to want to hurt him. 

“You are very welcome, Midou-san. I thank you for your patronage. Will you leave now? I am kind of working here.”

“Oh, yes, you’re right”, he scratched the back of his head awkwardly. And he was apparently very desperate to keep up a conversation. “But isn’t it time for a lunch break soon?”

“What a coincidence”, Minami found himself getting annoyed at Midou-san. He didn’t have time for someone’s privileged idea of the world. They came from different places, that much was for sure. “Could you imagine that some people do work at that time, because that is the time they get the best clientage? What do you, dear Midou-san, know about that?”

He tried to get back into the mood that he had gotten into when singing, but his stomach grumbling interrupted him. He hadn’t eaten yet. Breakfast had only been enough for Tamaki and Haruka, and they needed the food more than he did, so he skipped today. Not that he had told them. 

The firefighter looked uncomfortable and seemed to consider something. Minami hoped he would hurry up, so he could get back to playing soon.

“Would you mind if I invited you to have lunch with me? I gotta go back to work soon so I don’t have that much time left, but I…”, he finally looked at him straight. “I know it’s not much and you might think it’s condescending of me, but I’d really like to help out somehow, if you don’t mind…”

Oh, it _was_ condescending, but at least he was aware of it, Minami thought. But the offer was tempting. He really was hungry.

He nodded. “Alright. But you will be paying. And I would like to bring something home for the others as well.”

“Really?!” he looked surprised. Probably didn’t expect Minami to accept, but well, he couldn’t know that he was hungry. “And sure, I don’t mind!”

The smile, that smile that split Midou-san’s face like sunrays shining through clouds and illuminating dark days like fervent, molten gold, was too honest, Minami thought. But it did make the firefighter more sympathetic… maybe he should stop antagonizing him. He had just been doing his job after all. And it wasn’t his fault that his ex-landlord was such a bigot…

“Alright”, Minami said. “Where are you inviting me to, Midou-san? A luxurious restaurant?”

“I’m not sure if they’d have any space if we just go unannounced, hmm…”, his gesture of thinking was exaggerated. Was he living in a cartoon world? Maybe that was how everything looked to him. The thought was… kind of adorable.

“And it would be impossible for me to get in but thank you for your honest consideration of my sarcastic remark”, Minami was beginning to have fun. Was this man an idiot, or just a little slow?

“Alright, then I’ll show you to my fav local restaurant. It’s not that far away from here so we’ll be there in a moment”, Midou-san said and looked at him expectantly.

Minami nodded. He collected the coins and bills from the case and stowed them away safely. Then he put his guitar in the case and shouldered it. 

“I will be in your care”, he said. “Lead the way.”

“‘Kay”, Midou-san said, and Minami followed him.

The walk to the restaurant was silent. Midou-san inhaled from time to time, as if he was preparing to say something, yet he never did. Minami didn’t know what to talk about in this kind of situation, and neither had he talked much with non-Burnish over the last years. What did they even talk about?

“We’re here”, the firefighter said.

Minami stopped to study the menu hung out to attract customers from the street. “It looks good”, he remarked. And not too expensive, he added mentally. He did demand Midou-san pay earlier, but he’d feel terrible to leech off anyone too much. 

“They serve quickly and so far it’s always been good too. Do you wanna sit inside or outside?”

The question made his heartbeat spike for a second. It had been a while since he had been allowed inside any establishment. “Would it be alright if we go inside…?”

“Sure! I’m kinda a regular here so I’ll get us a nice table, hehe”, Midou-san said, grinning without a care in the world.

He held the door open for him too. What a gentleman.

For a moment Minami expected alarm bells to go off once he stepped foot into the restaurant, but… nothing happened. A few steps in he turned around to look at his companion questioningly.

Midou-san entered behind him. He had the audacity to _wink_ , winking at him right after he had almost been sure that a heat detector would announce his arrival and get them both thrown out quicker than anyone could say “Citizen Fire Protection Law”, the law that protected the citizens from Burnish entering their spaces, like restaurants and the newly built subway. Heat detectors recognized the naturally warmer Burnish bodies and notified authorities to remove any Burnish who dared try to ride a train. Minami knew because Yamato always used his motorcycle to get everywhere, even though he said that he’d much rather use public transport, especially now that it was more available again.

Minami really wanted to ride in a train one day. Maybe he could perform and entertain guests! Though it seemed like a faraway fantasy…

Apparently, this restaurant didn’t have any heat detectors, and he was safe. For now.

At the table he was handed a menu, but it was full of words he had never heard before, so he just ordered the same thing as his companion (something called ‘shawarma’). He didn’t know how to approach the waiter about the food for Haruka and Tamaki, but the waiter and Midou-san seemed to come to a silent understanding about it. Suddenly he felt kind of glad that the firefighter was with him…

Wait.

The situation only now caught up with Minami. He was getting food with a firefighter! In a restaurant! And the firefighter was paying, not only for him, but for Haruka and Tamaki too!

It was unsettling, but he’d work with it. Free food was free food… right?

“Say, Midou-san—", he began but was interrupted. 

“Torao”, Torao said. “You can call me Torao.”

“Alright, Torao-san”, Minami said. “Are you not afraid that you will lose your job? Eating out with someone like me.”

“Nah, everyone at my station thinks the same. When I told them about that landlord from yesterday, they all felt like punching him once or twice.”

Minami chuckled darkly. “I wish they had. I wish _I_ had.”

“Uhm… how are you…”, Torao struggled for words. “How is the situation right now? If you don’t mind me asking.”

Minami frowned. “Well, we have a place to stay for now”, he said then. “It is only temporary, and I am looking for a new place, but not many people want to rent an apartment to three minors who are Burnish. You understand, it is difficult to find someone who will not ask too many questions and also will not throw us out in a racist fit.”

“...yeah, that sounds…”, again he didn’t seem to know what to say. Minami couldn’t blame him. It was a sensitive topic, and he was glad that the firefighter approached it carefully instead of brashly talking over him like some know-it-all who had no idea of his struggle.

Still, it was an infuriating topic to talk about.

“And since my income is less than stable, and because I got interrupted by a certain handsome firefighter it is even more difficult. With my earnings from today’s session I would not be able to pay for even one of our meals here. Not thinking of rent”, Minami exhaled to calm himself. “I am sorry for ranting. I did not mean to upset you.”

“No it’s okay, I’ll listen. I wish I could do more, but as you’re probably very much aware, I… can’t”, he sighed. “Haha, young me just wanted to do a job where I help people, but now I’m in a position where I have to actively hurt one part of the population just because they happen to be _different_.”

“Help people…”, Minami nodded to himself. “I see. Then, Torao-san, would you help me right now?”

“Me?”, he looked surprised, and a little curious. “How can I help you?”

“Tell me about yourself. Help me cheer up in this dire situation. What kind of person is Midou Torao? What does he do in his free time? What is his family like? I want to know. Who knows. It might inspire me to write a new song, which might lead to me earning money.”

The surprise was evident, as Torao looked at him like he had seen a ghost. But then he smiled again. “Where to start… Uhh, as you may have noticed already, I’m working with Burning Rescue ‘cause I wanna help others. Oh but I worked with the police first. Haha, pretty standard young boy dream jobs, huh?”

A laugh.

Minami smiled. “A true superhero, are you?”

And the world and the system ruined it for him. The idealist’s dilemma. Truly a tragedy. Not only Burnish struggled, apparently. Not that Torao didn’t still have it better than people living in the inner ring with no running water or electricity…

“Your shawarma”, the waiter said and put down two plates in front of them, as well as a bag with two additional servings wrapped in brown paper.

Torao thanked the waiter and turned back to Minami. “I mean, superheroes are _super_ cool, aren’t they?”

“You could say that”, Minami eyed his food. He took a bite. “Oh! Delicious.”

“ _Super_ delicious?”, he asked.

He couldn’t hold back the laugh that shook his shoulders. Even though he raised his hand to try and hide his mouth from sight, it never reached, and instead he bared his whole laughing self to Torao.

“Yes”, he said then, unable to stop himself from smiling. “ _Super_ delicious.”

“Nice, finally made you laugh”, Torao said, that stupid grin of his in place again. “Suits you way better.”

Minami forced himself to stare down at the surface of the table to hide his, luckily only figuratively, burning cheeks. His heartbeat spiked again, as it had a lot in the presence of the firefighter Midou Torao… but for the first time the emotion behind it wasn’t negative at all. He took another bite.

Minami ate faster than he should have, so soon his empty plate was taken away by the waiter. Torao had finished too and answered more of his questions. Minami listened closely, afraid to miss any interesting details.

“And well, as for what I do in my free time…”, Torao leaned back. “I like to go on rides with my bike and take walks around town, mostly the outer ring. I just like its atmosphere a lot, I think. Oh but I also enjoy spending my time inside, reading comics and stuff. And playing board games with the crew. I kinda live at the station, you know.”

“You should take me on a ride”, Minami said. He batted his eyelashes at the other. “I could give you a private concert… just kidding.” 

It wasn’t like he could afford taking a day off. 

“S-sure, I’ll take you somewhere someday”, the answer came with a short delay. Did he put him off with that last remark? “And why don’t you give a bigger concert from time to time? I'm sure you've been approached about gigs in venues!”

Ah. Ignorance was bliss after all.

“I actually have been approached, but I had to decline”, Minami said. In Torao’s face he could see that he didn’t even notice that there was anything wrong with his question. “It is impossible for me to even enter a venue after all.”

“Huh? Why impossible?”

_Bliss._

“Torao-san”, Minami sighed. “Heat detectors.”

“...r-right…”, he turned his eyes towards the wall and seemed to see something. “Oh shit, I gotta head back to work.”

Minami took the bag with the food and shouldered his guitar again. “Alright”, he said. “Thank you for the food, Torao-san. And I am sorry to say it like this, but I hope I will never need to see you again… at least in certain contexts.”

“Well…”, Torao grinned at him one last time. “Then I sure hope to see you again in the other contexts then.” he said and called over the waiter to pay.

“I will go back to work now”, Minami said. “Goodbye Torao-san.”

He stepped out into the street. It was less busy than at lunchtime, but maybe he could still make some money if he went to a busier place. He already had an idea where to go.

The door to Yamato’s house was thrown open with a bang.

“Mimi-san, we’re home!”, Minami heard Tamaki’s voice from the entrance.

“Welcome home”, he said as the two others entered.

Tamaki hugged him as a greeting and Minami allowed himself to relax into the touch. They were all tired in the evenings, but Tamaki always made sure to greet him like this, with some human contact. The only contact they got was each other.

Possibly Tamaki was the only reason why no matter where they lived it always felt like home.

“I’m _starving_ ”, Haruka mumbled. “The doctor better have some food stocked.”

“Hell yeah”, Tamaki said and let go of Minami.

“Better”, Minami smiled. “I brought food.”

“Ohh!”, Tamaki looked excited. “What did you get?”

“Shawarma”, Minami said. “You will like it.”

The two of them ate like starving wolves. Considering they had worked the entire day the comparison wasn’t far off. They ate like this every day after all.

After they had finished, Haruka leaned back and sighed happily.

“Where’d you get this from anyway?”, he asked.

Minami froze.

Was it a good idea to tell them that it had been paid for by the firefighter who’d basically just evicted them from their home a day before…?

He decided to be vague.

“Someone invited me.”

“Someone? Who?”, Tamaki probed, but Minami just raised a finger to his lips.

“Secret”, he said.

Tamaki groaned but didn’t ask anymore. Haruka eyed Minami suspiciously.

Later, Tamaki was already snoring on the mattress, knocked out by hard work and the late hour, Haruka brought up the topic again.

“Minami”, Haruka said quietly as to not disturb their sleeping friend. “Did you get the food from that firefighter?”

Minami sighed. He had been found out. “Do not tell Yotsuba-san, will you?”

“Of course”, Haruka nodded. “I don’t want to cause the crisis of ‘delicious food’ vs ‘the food’s dubious origin’.”

“Torao-san is not _dubious_ ”, Minami said.

“First name basis?”, Haruka raised an eyebrow. “You don’t even call _us_ by our first names.”

“He insisted”, Minami mumbled. Staring at his hands folded on the table in front of him, he controlled his breathing. “How did you know?”

“I saw you in the restaurant. At first, I thought he was forcing you or something. I was about to storm in and take you back.”

“Even if I was being threatened, Isumi-san, please never storm in anywhere. I would hate for you to be endangered.”

“Yeah, yeah”, Haruka didn’t sound very convincing.

“What made you stop?”

He looked conflicted. That tiny soul, not even eighteen years old, who was stuck in this terrible world, but still never complained, at least not about their situation. Minami felt so old when he looked at him, yet he also saw himself in his eyes, the eyes of a child. They all had to grow up too fast.

“If you do not want to tell me that would be alrigh—”

“You… laughed.”

Ah, yes, he had laughed in that conversation. It had been a great feeling, to be able to laugh freely, just like that. A liberating feeling.

“There, you’re smiling again!”, Haruka pointed at him. Minami found that it was true. The memory had made him smile again. “And it’s not your usual smile!”

“Not my usual smile?”

“The one you smile to say ‘everything is going to be fine’, you know? This one is different. I can tell.”

“Isumi-san, you must be imagining things”, Minami didn’t want to think about the implications of it – the idea that… no, it couldn’t be.

“You looked like when you were singing”, Haruka said.

…that Torao’s company had made him feel safe. Safe and… _loved_.

Minami felt his cheeks flush.

Haruka looked at him smugly, but the expression was wiped off of his face faster than it had come.

A tremble in the earth let plaster rain from the ceiling, and while Minami remained frozen to the chair he had been sitting on, realisation sweet on his tongue and the tremor resonating somewhere deep within him, a place that was woven entirely out of passion and molten stone, a place that made him want to _burn_ , Haruka pulled him into the doorframe.

Tamaki rolled off the mattress with a groan, but before Haruka’s call for him to also get into the doorframe, the tremor was already over.

“Holy shit…”, Tamaki mumbled and flopped over on his back. Sprawled out with all his limbs spread he looked like a starfish. His fingers were glowing slightly.

He had felt it too then, that tremor that went straight to their flame, kindled it.

“Pull yourself together”, Haruka said, sharp anger barely contained in his tone. “We don’t need this house burning to the ground because you couldn’t handle a little quake.”

“Ehh, Isumin, no need to get mad at me”, Tamaki on the floor pouted.

Minami looked over at Haruka and saw his shoulders tremble with aftershocks of fear.

Yet it was fear of neither fire nor earthquake. Rather it was…

“You weren’t in a safe place! What if it had been a stronger quake and the house collapsed on you? You didn’t wake up in time. Do you ever think about what that does to _us_?!”

Haruka was fearing for Tamaki’s life. And luckily for him, Tamaki was very good in finding genuine concern behind Haruka’s rambling that was surely meant to sound selfish. He got up from the floor and walked up to the two of them, who were still standing in the doorframe.

Without saying anything he wrapped his long arms around Haruka and Minami and pulled them close.

Minami was surprised for a second, but returned the hug to the other two after a heartbeat.

He allowed himself to soak in the peace of this moment. They were safe for now. They had each other and a roof over their heads, and even though they barely scraped by, it worked out. It would always work out, somehow. He’d make sure of that.

For a moment his thoughts drifted off to Torao and his loud smile, his earnestness, and his hands around his drink in that restaurant. Minami’s heart jumped.

“You don’t need to worry about me, Isumin”, Tamaki said and pulled Minami back to reality.

“Who was worried?!”, Haruka sputtered.

The other two fell into friendly bickering, and Minami closed his eyes. He allowed himself to only exist in this moment – neither past, future nor present were relevant… all that counted was _being_ , his calm breathing, his beating heart, and the warmth of his friends’ embrace.

He would think about all this tomorrow.

Minami woke up with a start when a door fell shut.

He hadn’t slept as well as this night in what felt like ages, and that might actually have been the case.

“Mornin’ Sleeping Beauty”, Yamato greeted him, sly smile on his face.

“Good morning, doctor”, Minami tried to be as composed as possible for just waking up. “Did I oversleep?”

“You’re a musician, how would you oversleep?”, Yamato said, but seeing Minami’s death glare, he quickly retaliated. “The boys said you slept from shortly after the quake to now, which’d be… about nine hours. You’re good I’d say.”

“Then why are you here already?”

“Pharmacy’s closed today”, he shrugged. “Earthquake did some damage on an adjacent house and the construction is blocking me from opening.”

“Right…”, Minami said. “Were there any casualties?”

“Burnish deaths are always a dark figure, but I didn’t hear of any deaths in Shotokyo.”

“That is good to hear”, Minami said.

“Though what I heard”, Yamato frowned. “Well, it’s not for sure, you know how info is, but I’ve seen someone say that this earthquake happened not only here, but in multiple locations all over the world. At the same time! I’m no seismologist, but that sounds fishy to me, you get me?”

Minami contemplated for a while. “Did you feel that strange feeling accompanying the earthquake as well?”, he asked then. “Tamaki could barely control his fire.”

“I was already sleeping”, Yamato said. “I literally didn’t notice a thing. At all.”

“…you truly are an old man”, Minami said.

Yamato laughed. “I guess.”

The pharmacist began unpacking his bag and refilled his shelfs with medicine and other supplies. Minami had never questioned how he never got into any trouble with how many pills and powders he took from his store and brought here, but maybe there was something like a gap in controls that he was using.

Minami refused to call it “abuse”. It wasn’t abuse; it was for the better of a good part of their community. He didn’t want to imagine how many of them would have become crippled and had starved if not for Yamato’s constant efforts.

“So what are you doing today?”, Yamato asked. “Going out to sing?”

“No”, Minami exhaled. “I picked up some job ads yesterday and will go through them.”

Yamato turned around. His expression was unreadable. “Job… ads, huh”, he hummed then. “You sure?”

“Of course I am.”

“Just saying that you three are off well enough that you don’t _have_ to, you know.”

“It is not fair that I am the only one of us who is still allowed to dream.”

Yamato sighed, and he looked older than his twenty-two years. “I want to work towards a future where all of you are allowed to dream”, he said, and Minami felt his eyes burn with unshed tears of fiery magma.

“Thank you, doctor, but please focus on working on a present where all of us survive.”

“Yeah, yeah, Onii-san will work hard~”

“Do shut up.”

There was no bite to his words.

The two of them remained silent as Minami flipped through job ad after job ad, looking for a job that he could both do and that accepted Burnish workers, but to no avail. Barely any of the ads accounted for the possibility of a Burnish even _reading_ them, and if they did the jobs were physical and brute, something that Minami wouldn’t be capable of immediately. But he couldn’t afford waiting much longer, they needed a place to stay, they needed to eat, Haruka’s shoes were almost completely gone at this point and he needed new ones, Tamaki was basically only sleeping, eating and working and he wanted to relieve him of a little of all the stress, and–

The ground shook again, stronger than before.

This time it was Minami who jumped up and grabbed Yamato’s arm to drag him under the table, the opposite of him being saved by Haruka last evening.

Haruka. He was working right now, so he would be fine, probably. Maybe he fell off his bike, but he shouldn’t be buried under debris.

Minami’s heart was pounding as the walls violently coiled around them, the might of the quake shaking them like wind would a body of water. They were holding onto one table leg each, so it didn’t slip away in the tremors and still provided safety in case something fell on it.

Tamaki. He was in the factory. Was that building built to withstand earthquakes? If not… Minami didn’t want to think of the consequences, but while he barely managed to stand upright and the world was falling apart around him, he couldn’t help but see heavy machinery fall over and bury bodies. A strand of blue hair showed from under a hairnet–

No, that wasn’t going to happen. Everything was going to be fine. The house he and Yamato were in wasn’t falling apart either, and the machines were all mounted. Nobody would get hurt. It would be alright.

How long was this quake going to take? Through the dust of the plaster Minami could see that the clock hadn’t moved, yet it felt like it had been going on for hours already.

Finally, finally the quaking died down. Yamato inhaled deeply and coughed immediately; the air was full of dust.

Minami let go of the table and saw that the metal of the leg had begun to glow with heat from where his hand had touched it. He had barely kept himself under control.

“Let’s get outta here”, Yamato coughed, and pulled Minami up to his feet. He too noticed how hard it was to breathe now. A siren sounded from outside. “At least until the dust settles.”

When Yamato opened the door and they stumbled out of it, the Burning Rescue truck stopped in front of the adjacent building. It was burning. Apparently, someone wasn’t able to control themselves as well as Yamato or Minami.

Again he hoped that Tamaki would be alright.

The truck’s doors opened, and a group of firefighters jumped out. They were armed.

“Touma! Start evacuation. Nagi, assistance”, the apparent leader commanded. As if through clouds about to burst with the weight of the rain Minami recognized the voice. Torao.

An affirmative call.

“Momo and I will go inside. Iori, back us up”, Torao said.

Minami breathed in the air that smelled of fear and smoke, but it was better than inhaling dust, and he felt like a small weight had been lifted from his chest. The firefighters were storming into the building, and he watched them drag out a woman barely older than him. She was shaking and wringing her hands. They still held a small flame. 

At least she was alive, Minami thought. 

“The medication’s gonna be fine”, Yamato next to him said. “I made sure the shelves wouldn’t fall over and if some boxes fell, I can just clean it up.”

“Very relieving, doctor”, Minami said numbly. He wasn’t relieved at all. Now that the initial shock was over, he began looking around, trying to find Haruka and Tamaki, as if they would come out of hiding somewhere really close soon. Where could they be…?

“Natsume-san!”, the other fireman from when they were evicted approached them quickly. It felt like it had been ages, when it had barely been more than a day. “This is too dangerous, please step back.”

“I apologize”, Minami said numbly, and stepped back, never stopping to look around for the other two. He barely noticed how Yamato pulled him back even more and sat him down on the stairs to a house opposite of his office.

All sensations came to him as if through thick smoke and he just watched on as the fire in that house shrunk more and more, until its powerful roar turned into a death rattle.

After the fire had died down, Minami felt his own fire sigh in disappointment. He had wanted to join, to burn.

Some of the firefighters gathered near him.

“Was there no one else inside?”, the childhood friend of Tamaki and Haruka asked.

“No, only her”, Torao said. “But she really needs to be treated quickly.”

“Nagi-chan, how much to the nearest hospital?”, the other one asked.

“We can’t drive her to a hospital!”

True. Burnish wouldn’t get treated in hospitals. That was the reason why they had Yamato.

“Ehh!?”

“Didn’t you see her hands?”

“Is she…”? Iori asked.

Stupid question, Minami thought. What else would she be, living in the inner ring, where nobody but Burnish lived.

“...yeah.”

“Then what should we do?”, the guy’s voice was layered with worry.

“Excuse me”, Yamato interrupted the firefighters. “I couldn’t help but overhear, and might I take her under my wing?”

“Who are you?”, Torao asked. His work mode was… not bad.

“Not important”, Yamato said. Minami thought that maybe he shouldn’t say something that suspicious to a firefighter, but this was Yamato he was talking about. “What’s actually important is that I can treat her. And my friend over there is a little out of it, and our house is literally a dust storm, so if one of you could go in there and bring me the meds I tell you, that’d be just superb.”

Out of it? Minami was just fine. Maybe his head was spinning a little and he was kind of confused, but there was no need to call him ‘out of it’. Who did the old man think he was?

“Friend?”, he felt Torao’s eyes on him. “Minami!?”

Minami tried to focus on him, but only succeeded halfway.

“Torao-chan?”, the other interrupted whatever moment they were having.

“Boss, did you hear what he said?”, Torao asked. Probably wireless communication, because Minami didn’t see anyone.

He listened for a moment and apparently received the command to go ahead.

“Alright. Momo, you’re the fastest. You go.”

“Aye aye!”

Yamato gave the energetic man a list of meds he wanted, just in case, and squatted down next to the woman. He whispered to her, and her fearful expression eased into something less strained, and more peaceful. 

Minami finally managed to look up properly and saw Torao standing there, calmly leading the situation. Somehow his presence made him less worried. Now if only…

“Minami!” “Mimi-san!”

Minami turned his head to see Haruka and Tamaki running towards him, Tamaki carrying Haruka’s bicycle as if it were nothing. They both looked dishevelled but alright and save for a bloody knee on Haruka’s side there were no visible injuries either. 

For what felt like the first time in an eternity, he let out a relieved breath.

“You’re alright!”, Haruka said. “We saw the firefighters and thought—" 

“No, Isumi-san, there was no need to worry”, he said slowly. “Rather, I was worried for you.”

“We’re good”, Tamaki mumbled. “Factory’s real sturdy.”

“I am… glad you are here”, Minami said. He felt the tension in his shoulders unwind. His vision cleared. “Completely and utterly glad.”

Tamaki put down the bicycle on the ground and sat next to him. Even though he was taller, he leaned into Minami slightly; weight an indicator that he was _there_ , that he was _alive_. Haruka did the same on the other side, and Minami felt how he finally truly calmed down. He had almost already forgotten about Torao.

The man named Momo returned with medication and handed it to Yamato, who swiftly began working to put their poor neighbour at ease.

Torao and Iori stepped in front of them.

“I’m… uhh…”, Torao scratched his chin. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

“Likewise”, Minami answered. He put on the smile that he used when talking to Tamaki and Haruka. He wasn’t capable of anything else at the moment. His heart still hurt from when it was pounding against his ribcage in panic earlier.

“May I ask you if you know the woman who was involved in the incident?”, Iori asked suddenly.

“Can’t that wait a sec, Iori!?”

“Eh, Iorin?”, Tamaki looked up. “Isumin, look, it’s Iorin!”

“Oh, true”, Haruka said. Something in his voice told Minami that he had already known that. “Hi Izumi.”

“Hello, Isumi-san. Yotsuba-san”, he bowed down slightly. How polite. “Wh-what is it?”

“Is that all you say after meeting with your old friends again?”, Torao said.

“We… we weren’t necessarily friends. And besides, right now we are on the job, we should—“, Iori stammered.

“Hah, Iori…”

“We weren’t friends?”, Tamaki asked. “But we exchanged friendship bracelets, remember? You made them Iorin, they were really cute~”

Haruka nodded fiercely. Now that the conversation was flowing, he was getting active. “Did you know you made them fireproof? We still have them.”

“Not right now though, ‘cuz they get in the way at work, you know?”, Tamaki said.

They were adorable, Minami thought and smiled to himself.

“...you still have them as well…?”, Iori whispered.

“‘as well’, huh?”, Torao grinned.

“Midou-san!”, Iori complained. He was completely flustered.

Both of them froze for a moment and seemed to listen to something.

“...sorry, boss”, Torao said contritely.

“Please excuse our behaviour, Kujou-san”, Iori bowed down to an invisible boss. It was… confusing, admittedly.

“Should I leave so the three of you can catch up?”, Minami asked. “Perhaps the doctor could use my assistance…” 

He looked over at where Yamato was sitting next to the sleeping woman. She looked better already, colour having returned to her face, and deep breaths lifting her chest evenly. She’d be fine by the day after tomorrow, and Yamato definitely didn’t need his help with anything.

“Really?” Torao sounded surprised at something. The boss again?

“Understood, Kujou-san”, Iori nodded and smiled with a look towards Haruka and Tamaki. “It seems we do have some time to catch up, after all. I-if you want…”

“Of course we want Iorin”, Tamaki said and smiled. “Right, Isumin?”

“Sure”, Haruka said. “Not that I’m _that_ desperate to talk to firefighters all the time, but I’ll make an exception for you.”

Minami was glad that the three of them got along that well, despite not seeing each other for years, and now basically being on opposite sides. He got up and brushed dust off his pants. “I will leave you to catch up then”, he said. “Enjoy your time with Izumi-san, will you?”

It’d allow for them to be children again for just a little while, or so he hoped. 

He looked around aimlessly, trying to find a place where he could stay without disturbing clean-up or conversations happening.

Torao stepped next to Minami.

“...hey.”

“Oh, hello Torao-san.”

“Wanna… take a walk around the block…?”, he asked carefully.

“I do not mean to offend you, but I doubt it would be a good idea for you to walk around here in your attire”, Minami said and pointed at Torao’s Burning Rescue uniform vaguely. Then he suddenly felt like he had to share something, that thing that Torao couldn’t have known about, but that had bothered him since that first quake yesterday. “Yet there is something I would like you to hear about.”

“Oh, right. I—", he interrupted himself. “Oh for fuck’s sake!”

He turned off his earpiece and cleared his throat. “You were saying?”

“The earthquakes”, Minami said slowly. He was trying to explain it in a way that someone who hadn’t felt it would get it as well. “They are not normal. We know earthquakes, there are still a lot of them, but the last two were different.”

“Different? How so?”

“ _We_ ”, Minami put emphasis on the word, so it was clear who was meant by it. “We felt them. It was as if the tremors resonated within us. The earthquake was calling for our flames.”

He inhaled and looked at Torao directly. 

“What I am trying to say is”, he scrambled for the right words to make the other understand. “The fire… is not her fault. It could not be helped; she had no control over her fire. We all faced that problem, but some can control it better and did not get affected. So if you could please refrain from legal action against her…? It was not arson that set fire to the building.”

“Hmm, I understand…”, Torao mumbled. “Well, not really, but you know. I’ll talk to our boss about it. I’m sure he won’t do anything. And hey, I doubt anyone here who might’ve seen the fire wouldn’t understand, just like you said right now. And none of our crew is like _that_ either, so no worries”, he smiled. Minami felt younger suddenly, as if being with Torao and seeing him smile at him like that took away all that premature adulthood that he was acting out day after day. He was just Minami in this moment, not looked down on by the world, or playing pretend-parent to two rowdy kids. No, he was just Minami hanging with someone his age. It was… a nice feeling.

“Thank you, Torao-san. But I am worried. These earthquakes are not normal, they are not coming from where earthquakes usually come from. There is something happening. So please take care of the city and…”, he averted his eyes. “And take care of yourself as well.”

“Thanks for telling me. We will”, he looked at Minami, determination in his eyes. And was there something else as well? “I will. So you do too.”

Minami nodded. “I will.”

Torao startled and looked at his earpiece.

“Whoa, what? I thought I turned it off?”

He listened.

“You can _do_ that? Hah…”

Again a pause.

“Roger”, Torao nodded and turned back to Minami. “Seems like we gotta go again.”

Minami raised a hand to wave goodbye. “Goodbye, Torao-san. I hope we will see each other again under better circumstances.”

“I hope so too, Minami. See ya”, he waved as well and walked back to where Momo and Touma were waiting for him. “Alright boys let’s get going. And thanks for the help, four-eyes.”

“No prob”, Yamato said. “But here, please call me ‘doctor’. Oh, but ‘Onii-san’ is fine too—"

“Bye Iorin!”, Tamaki interrupted Yamato. He was waving exaggeratedly, as if he was seeing off a ship that was going for a month-long journey. “See you soon!”

“Hey, we don’t know if that’ll be possible”, Haruka mumbled, but he also waved. 

“Alright then Doctor Four-Eyes”, Torao said and got on the truck. The other said their goodbyes as well.

“...it was nice talking to you two again after all this time, Yotsuba-san, Isumi-san”, Iori said and inclined his head. “I hope we get a chance to talk again someday. Goodbye.”

The doors of the truck closed, and Minami watched as it disappeared behind the street corner.

“So nothing happened to our house?”, Haruka asked.

“If you call shaking and a literal dust shower ‘nothing’, then yes”, Yamato answered. “At least I think with a little cleaning it’ll all be as good as new.”

“I see…”, Haruka’s expression was taken over by a mix of relief and guilt.

“Others were not as lucky I take it?”, Minami asked.

Tamaki and Haruka nodded in synch.

“How about after we clean the house, we go help others?”, he offered. That’d be for the best.

“Sounds like a plan”, Yamato said.

The other two agreed as well, and together they began the clean-up.

It was surprisingly easy, but Minami thought that it was probably because they were four people. Yamato and Haruka took over sorting the shelves anew while Tamaki and Minami cleaned out the dust.

They were done within an hour and could move on to different tasks. Yamato elected to stay behind to tend to their neighbour, but Tamaki and Haruka were restless and Minami followed them out the door.

“So what did the three of you talk about?”, he asked after they had walked for a while.

“We caught up”, Haruka said. “Nothing special. He was talking about work, like normal friends would—”

He stopped himself as he realised his own mistake. There was no ‘normal friends’ for them. Being able to talk like that… it was very lucky.

“Well, it was nice… I guess.”

He was happy, Minami could tell.

“Suuuper nice!”, Tamaki said. He spread his arms to the sides as if to hug a giant. “This nice!”

Considering Tamaki’s size it was an impressive amount of nice.

“Iorin told us about Burning Rescue. They have super cool weapons because their Nagicchi is super creative and thinks of lots of ways to extinguish fires. For example Iorin has this huge cannon that goes _bang_ and then there’s a blanket there and the fire goes out! Or Momorin, he’s suuuper fast with his special shoes, and Toracchi has a flaming sword, to cut the fire! No idea how that works, but it’s super cool, isn’t it? And—”

“You haven’t even met any of these guys and already gave them nicknames”, Haruka mumbled, interrupting Tamaki’s rambling.

Tamaki ignored him.

“But! Nagicchi’s an inventor. That’s like something outta one of these stories the doc tells us sometimes. From anime!”

“Maybe Izumi should make one. An anime.”

“We should tell him next time! That’s more interesting too, better than hearing about our jobs.”

“What did he look like when you told him about your jobs?”, Minami interrupted them to ask.

“Ah…”, Haruka thought for a moment. “Maybe… sad?”

“Sangry”, Tamaki said. “He was sad and angry. He looked like that too when someone else got the merch he wanted from the claw crane machine, remember?”

Haruka seemed to realise what Tamaki meant. “Sangry it is.”

Minami understood. What a good friend they had in Izumi Iori.

He imagined what their lives would have looked like in a world where there was no difference between Burnish and non-Burnish. Would those three have gone to school together? They would probably still be in high school now. Would Iori be with them? Having already joined the workforce he was probably a prodigy of some sorts, but from what Minami had seen it wasn’t unlikely that he would have decided to stay in school to be with his friends.

Must be nice, he thought, the imaginary study meetings and arcade outings in mind. He was glad that they had friendships like that, regardless of the real-world situation.

“Look”, Tamaki said suddenly and woke Minami up from his daydreaming.

His breath hitched.

The sight in front of him was a truly hellish one.

The slums mostly consisted of concrete buildings quickly put up after the Great World Burn. They weren’t great, but one could live in them temporarily. In Shotokyo those buildings had been quickly replaced by nicer accommodations, as private investors began building up the real estate market again. However nobody bothered with this part, the inner ring, where only Burnish lived. A lot of houses didn’t have running water or electricity, and were mostly just used to sleep, not to live.

However even seeing those hostile shells of houses reduced to rubble by the earthquake made Minami angry.

“We gotta help”, Tamaki said.

Minami and Haruka nodded in synch.

They found out that the city government had already promised to rebuild the houses, though nobody knew how long it would take, and if they would actually follow up on it. Minami didn’t doubt that it would come to it at some point, at least in the last few years the government had become slightly more friendly towards Burnish. They didn’t want them to disappear to hell anymore, they were glad if they stayed in the inner ring except for some kinds of work, and therefore they’d guarantee that no homeless Burnish would crawl outside the destroyed den of the inner ring to look for shelter in Shotokyo.

Time was the question.

There were about seventy Burnish left without a home in this street alone. Word of mouth was that this area was hit the hardest, but if one ran the numbers quickly there’d be at least a couple hundred who were without home.

They formed groups with the ones that had lived here and other helpers who had gotten off easy.

Tamaki and Minami landed in the clean-up group while Haruka managed the distribution of resources and room everyone could spare. After everyone had gotten a place to stay at temporarily, most of that group also joined in on the clean-up.

The hours blurred into dusty skin cut open from sharp edged concrete rubble, aching muscles and a tense jaw from trying not to cry. When Minami finally took a breath, it had turned dark already.

If there had been street lanterns on this street they were gone now, and so the darkness of the night felt somehow deeper and more prominent than usual. With a look at the stars Minami’s heart began to pound mysteriously. He felt a sense of homesickness that wasn’t his own.

Haruka stopped next to him. “Don’t you want to take a break?”, he asked. “You’ve been working non-stop since the firefighters left.”

“What time is it?”, Minami asked.

“We’re approaching midnight”, Haruka said. “Seriously, take a break.”

Oh, he really had been working for a long time… But there was no way he could stop now.

“I apologize, Isumi-san”, he said. “But this is something I need to do.”

“…Okay”, Haruka said. “But don’t overdo it. You’re not doing this alone, yes?”

“I am aware.”

“Good.”

He went back to work, carrying rubble away from the fundament of the house. There were personal belongings under there, and he needed to get them out before the government came with their machinery that would make this area a desolation ready to be build up again in a matter of hours. They sure wouldn’t care about any of this, not if there was a photo of someone’s mother or a child’s only toy somewhere under the concrete. Those were all things that he had already found on this day, and he knew that more of the kind would be found soon.

So he continued, bit by bit, and slowly but surely the street looked cleaner already.

It wasn’t his work, he knew that. He couldn’t lift huge pieces, and was mainly carrying small rubble, but he was still doing his part. But the roughly one hundred people working on it were doing an amazing job. He smiled and closed his eyes for a second. Just a small breather, a short break, and he’d be good to go again. It was only three in the morning; he could still work until sunrise.

As soon as his eyes were shut the ground below him tilted.

Something was up with gravity, he thought, but didn’t manage to open his eyes anymore.

The last memory he had before drifting off into a dreamless sleep was his chest pressed against Tamaki’s back as he carried him.

Minami woke up with a start. There was light outside. 

“Easy there, hard worker”, Yamato looked up from where he was sitting at the table. “One does not simply work for half a day straight and go on as if nothing happened. What were you thinking? You could’ve just rested when you were tired.”

“How long did I sleep?”, he asked.

“You passed out about 3am and it’s almost 5 in the afternoon now. You slept for more than half a day.”

“I need to go help again—”

“Denied. Doctor’s orders. You aren’t lifting anything but a spoon for today.”

“ _Nikaido-san_ ”, Minami pleaded. Yamato didn’t even react to the use of his name.

“Yes, I’ve seen it too, and I’ve heard them crying, and I get you. But you’re exhausted, you can’t go help again.”

Minami grew quiet for a bit, but then he looked up again, trying to convey the determination he was feeling. “Can I sing for them?”

“…”, Yamato sighed. “Alright. After you eat and rest some more. And if you feel airy or get a headache or whatever stop and come here. You don’t need to also collapse after the world around us did.”

Minami agreed, and when Yamato finally let him go, it had turned dark already.

His guitar slung over his back Minami approached that street again.

Haruka immediately spotted him when he arrived and opened his mouth as if to send him away again, but then his eyes flicked to the guitar on his back. The sigh he let out was understanding, and he nodded slightly, so that only Minami would see.

“Thank you”, Minami mouthed, and sat down on a bigger piece of rubble, enough to host him and one other person. He opened his guitar case and took the guitar. Then he closed the case again. Today he wasn’t playing to earn money. He never was playing for money when playing for the Burnish, because for them he sang special songs, songs that only Burnish would be able to understand, to feel. Or so he thought – he had never played one of these for an audience of non-Burnish, and he doubted he ever would.

He inhaled and then sang.

It was not a song in any language of the earth, but he knew that all the other Burnish understood it; they felt the harmonies just like he did, their fire responding to the rhythm, giving them new energy. 

These were songs of flames and love, words from another world, a world of heat and passion and flames that never hurt - they were Burnish songs. 

Around him everyone stopped in their tracks for a breather, heads turning towards the source of the music that understood them better than they understood themselves, and Minami smiled slightly and continued to sing, to recreate that sound within him to the best of his abilities. 

Someone let out a small flame, dancing around their fingertips, and like a wildfire the action spread, and soon the street was illuminated by them, their Burnish light, gently flickering in the velvety darkness of dawn. 

Minami felt the heat emerging from under his skin as well, never touching his guitar, but kissing his neck like a lover, licking up his arm and shoulder, where it stayed and illuminated his face while he sang.

He felt so _alive_.

Minami wished that this moment would last forever. Of course, he was just here temporarily, to give everyone a morale boost, but he felt like it was working. After this they would be far more motivated to continue working, and despair wouldn’t overtake anyone.

Three children ran forward. They were barely over ten years old, and Minami doubted that they were Burnish, but maybe their parents were. They stopped in front of him and took each other’s hands, dancing in a round dance. Their laughter was refreshing as well, and Minami saw many others smile. Some also had tears in their eyes. This music had an effect like this on everyone he had ever played it for, so it was no surprise. But the song would be over soon. He felt his fingers grow heavy. He really was still exhausted. If only he could play for these people until the end of time. He doubted that there was anything that would feel more rewarding to him than this.

He stopped, chest heaving with the exhaustion from singing, but he was smiling. This had been nice.

Around him the flames died down, and the chatter of working people began anew.

An elderly woman approached him, a cup of water in her hands.

“Oh dear”, she said as he drank quick, big gulps. His throat had felt so dry.

“Thank you”, he said and handed the cup back to her. “This was exactly what I needed right now.”

“Oh no”, she said and smiled. “Your song was what all of us needed right now. A cup of water is nothing against the refreshment your song brought us. And after you just collapsed too! Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yes, I am”, Minami said and smiled. “I will be up and helping again soon.”

Someone sat down behind him. That someone was taller than him, and the back leaning against his felt strong and reassuring in a way.

“Hey”, a familiar voice said.

“Torao-san!”, Minami said. He was surprised. What was Torao doing here? Was it alright for him to be here? This was a place for Burnish at the moment, no place for a firefighter, no matter how nice he was. But maybe… he relaxed against Torao’s back. Just for a moment it would be alright to indulge him. He’d lead him away from here later. 

“I… heard your song”, a break. “I really liked it. Your singing is really beautiful.”

“So I have been told”, Minami said. “Thank you regardless.” 

He leaned his head against Torao’s shoulder, resting it there for a moment. Just a moment, a moment in which only he and Torao existed. 

“Do you do this often?”, Torao asked. He carefully leaned his head against Minami’s.

Minami’s breath hitched at the intimate gesture. Looking at the sky together as they were Minami felt oddly complacent. 

Yet he forced himself to wake up. What was he even doing here? 

“We should go”, he said abruptly and stood up again. “Torao-san, please follow me.”

He couldn’t let Burnish come in contact with a firefighter, not in this place. He didn’t want any conflict or cause any hurt to his fellow Burnish. 

Quickly slinging the guitar case over his shoulder he walked straight towards… no, he didn’t know what he was walking towards, he was just walking away from the place where Burnish were still mourning what had been taken from them by the earthquake. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause any more problems. I was looking around and then I saw you and… the others…”, Minami couldn’t see him, but he heard Torao’s voice close by, fabric of his clothes rustling. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have come. I didn’t want to make you worry even more.”

“I will not say that it is not your fault, but you did not cause any problems. I doubt most people noticed you, considering how busy they are. Just… act with some consideration for us. The inner ring is a place where only we reside. Outsiders and especially Burning Rescue members are our natural enemy. You will be destroyed and eliminated like we are having an allergic reaction if you get in trouble with the wrong people. Though from their perspective they will be in the right, and if that happens, I will side with them.”

“...I understand”, he seemed to struggle with something. “I’ll get going then…”

The realisation that this was for the best, that they couldn’t be together any longer, not as friends and not as whatever it was that they were slowly but surely steering towards, that it was the best action regarding their circumstances hit him scorching hot. And he decided to go through with it right in this moment, no matter how much of him screamed at him not to.

“Tora-, no, Midou-san. I am thankful for the time we got to spend together”, Minami said. He felt something stuck in his throat that made speaking difficult. The words that would end it all just wouldn’t come out. He had to try very hard to say it. “Thank you for helping me discover a side of myself that I had yet to know.”

A tear stole itself from his eye and ran down his cheek. He raised his arm to wipe it away with his sleeve.

He heard the other turn around.

“See y— goodbye, Minami.” he said and started walking away.

At least he understood.

“Forgive me”, Minami’s voice felt so small. “In another world we could have stayed by each other’s side, but here… I do not see a future.”

When he returned with red eyes and a wobbly voice Haruka and Tamaki noticed immediately and dragged him away from the crowd and back to Yamato’s.

Neither of them asked what had happened, but Minami knew that they both had an inkling.

Yamato however had no such qualms.

When they stepped into the room Yamato took one look at Minami’s face.

“Did he break up with you?”, he asked nonchalantly.

“Yama-san!” “Nikaido!”

“Look at him, it’s not like it’s not obvious. I’m trying to break the ice here.”

“Still, the wound is fresh, you don’t need to poke at it!”, Haruka said harshly. “Idiot old man.”

“He”, Minami had to hold back a sob. Why was crying so powerful? He just wanted to talk normally again. “He did not break up with me. I did. With him.”

“What?”, came from three people at the same time.

“But you liked him, right?”, Tamaki asked.

Minami nodded.

“And he liked you?”, Haruka said.

“Smack my ass and call me Sally, if he didn’t like Minami”, Yamato mumbled. “But I think I get it.”

“You do?”, Haruka and Tamaki apparently didn’t.

“Imagine”, Yamato said, but paused as he searched for a good ideology. “Okay, here. Imagine there’s a dog yes?”

Haruka rolled his eyes, but Tamaki was listening closely.

“And the dog loves to eat meat. And especially chicken meat. But one day the dog meets a chicken and they fall in love. Now the chicken takes the dog to the chicken’s home where lots of other chickens live. And the dog is well known for eating chickens, so the other chickens don’t want the dog there. But the dog would never eat a chicken again, because of the feelings for the chicken! The other chickens can’t know that though, and there’s no guarantee that the dog won’t betray them and eat one or more of them. Or maybe the dog is only pretending to be nice, so more dogs can get easy access to the chickens’ house? So either way, letting the dog into the chicken’s house is risky and, no matter how much they like each other, the chicken wants to protect the chicken family from having to face the decision of whether they want to accept the dog for the chicken’s happiness or to mistrust and throw the dog out.”

“You could’ve just said that without the weird chicken stuff”, Tamaki said. “And why’s Mimi-san a chicken anyway? He’s a way cooler animal than that.”

Haruka nodded. “But yeah, I get it now. Thanks, I guess?”, he looked at him with worry in his eyes. “Will you be okay though?”

Minami nodded. “I will be back on my feet by tomorrow”, he said determined to make it true.

“…yeah”, Haruka said.

“Sing for us again then”, Tamaki said. “Tomorrow.”

“Of course”, Minami said. “It’s the least I could do.”

“Nice”, Yamato said. “Now that this is decided, you three go to bed. You all look like you’ve been to hell and back.”

Minami wanted to protest that he wasn’t tired, but as soon as his head hit the mattress he drifted into a dreamless sleep.

The next days simultaneously felt like they lasted years and only heartbeats.

Minami and the others continued helping the clean-up, and Minami sang for everyone.

Singing was a good way to distract himself from his self-induced heartbreak, and luckily nobody else asked about it.

After just two more days the rubble from the street had been cleared out, thanks to everyone’s hard work, despite the factories resuming production after just one day of damage control. Now they could move on to the less heavy tasks, like rescuing personal belongings, or helping other areas that weren’t as damaged. Word of mouth was that it looked similar in other areas of the inner ring. Minami was glad that their community stuck together despite the hard times.

One evening Minami was sitting outside Yamato’s house and tuning his guitar when a young man, barely older than Tamaki and Haruka came up to him.

“Hey”, he said. “I heard you were making music sometimes.”

Minami nodded.

“Could you come play for us too? We live on the other side of the inner ring, closer to the river.”

“If you would like me to”, Minami said, and that was how he was invited to come play for many groups of Burnish, and not only his close neighbourhood. He was happy that he could make that many people happy with his music and began focusing even more energy on it.

The more he sang the less he had to think of other things, like a world where he could have allowed himself to fall in love with Torao.

Even the smaller quakes and trembles that followed the large quake were no problem when he sang. He didn’t hear of a single Burnish to lose control again, though he still felt the same sensation he had felt with the other quakes.

Until…

“What’s this?”, Yamato asked. He was working on cataloguing the medicine he had brought into the inner ring, so he could figure out which ones he had to restock. Minami was working on a new song, but he felt it too.

An outcry of pain. A cry for help. It came from far, far away, but was present in Minami’s mind and soul, and the flame within him flared up angrily, wanting to help. What was going on?

As he opened his mouth to tell Yamato that he didn’t know, the earth shook again.

“This is worse”, Yamato said. “Let’s get out of here.”

The two of them ran towards the door and out on the street.

It was like hell had broken loose. The street was full of Burnish like them, aimlessly wandering now that the shaking was over. Nobody really seemed to know where their destination was, but they all felt the urge to follow that call they had heard, that they were still hearing. Minami felt it too, that pull.

He just hoped Tamaki and Haruka were alright.

A breathless youth came running onto the street.

“Shotokyo is going crazy!”, they called loud enough for everyone to hear. “Everything’s a mess!”

Minami looked over at Yamato, who nodded.

“Let’s go. Maybe we can help. We gotta walk though, I don’t want us to get hurt if we take my motorcycle.”

The walk to Shotoyko felt longer than usual. Maybe it was because of the hundreds of Burnish out on the streets, just _searching_ without knowing what they were looking for.

There was a roar that was audible to both Minami’s ears and his soul emerged from the eastern horizon, and compulsively everyone whipped their head around to look.

A wall of fire came rolling over the land, a fiery tsunami, engulfing all; burning everything in its way.

And for a reason he couldn’t explain he had to burn with it, give it his all, and let it all out. There was no way that he could stop himself from it, and neither could anyone around him. They all burned, hot and passionate, and Minami felt that he would burn out when he realised.

“Nikaido-san”, he said. “Everything is burning.”

Even Yamato was burning. Yamato never burned.

“Yes”, Yamato nodded. He almost seemed like he was dreaming, enjoying being able to burn freely for the first time. “Everything.”

“What about the others?”

“They’re also burning”, Yamato said. His own words woke him up from his trance. “Oh no.”

“We need to go”, Minami said. “Help. Anything.”

Yamato nodded, and they began to run.

Shotokyo wasn’t far anymore, but Minami heard something unsettling before he saw it. A crowd of people screaming in panic.

Going around the last corner of the outer ring confirmed it. Everyone was burning as well, just like the world was. The mass of panicking people was moving like white water rapids, and they were all burning, burning…!

But wait. He only noticed now, because he had been overwhelmed by other feelings, but this fire…

Not far from himself he spotted a familiar sight.

The Burning Rescue Truck was standing there, a bastion of calm – and on top there was Torao, holding a megaphone.

“Nikaido-san!”, Minami yelled over the roar of the fire and the crowd. “I need to get there! So he can tell them!”

“Tell them what?”, Yamato called after him, but Minami had turned his back on him and was fighting himself through the crowd.

Luckily everyone was burning, so he didn’t immediately get lynched by the crowd for being Burnish and causing this fire, no matter how little he had to do with this. Hell, he didn’t know what it was all about, but he knew one thing. He had to get to Torao right this moment.

A stray arm whacked him in the face and Minami felt each and every one of his teeth as he involuntarily clenched them together harder than was usually, but he kept moving forward, little by little, his eyes fixed on Torao.

“Midou-san!”

Torao on the Burning Rescue truck stopped and turned around.

“ _Torao-san_!”, Minami called again as he saw that Torao was looking into his direction.

He finally focused on him. “Minami!”, he called out to him.

Minami tried gathering enough strength to yell what he wanted to say but was whacked in the side by an elbow. He couldn’t even make out _whose_ elbow it had been, but it knocked all air out of his lungs. He struggled to keep standing.

“Grab my hand!”, Torao’s voice reached him through the noise.

Minami looked up to see Torao reaching out to him, one hand securing him to the truck and the other an escape route from the hell that was the crowd.

The stretched-out hand as the vanishing point of his tunnel vision, Minami continued to walk forward, until he could almost reach the hand. He reached out as well. His sleeve slid down his arm a bid and he saw the leather band with the pick that Tamaki made for him. It was burning as well, yet nothing was consumed by the fire. So it was true.

The other mumbled something to himself and reached out even more than before, and finally it was within reach.

Minami seized the hand. Torao pulled him up from the raging crowd and onto the safe fire truck.

“Torao-san”, Minami panted. “You need to… to tell them—”

Torao interrupted him with a hug but Minami didn’t have time for it. He wiggled himself out of the embrace and shoved Torao away from himself.

“Midou-san _now is not the best time for this_ ”, Minami said sternly.

“S-sorry… you were saying?”

“You need to tell them to calm down”, he said. “They are burning, yes; but these flames are kind. They are gentle, and cool. They will not hurt, and they will not kill. They physically cannot hurt them; it is the opposite. The flames are protecting everyone.”

“Wait, what!?”, he looked baffled. “Protecting? I mean, I guess nothing is happening to me and I’m kinda burning too but…”

“Please believe me”, Minami implored Torao. “The quakes… I believe this is the final one. This is what everything led up to, the Burnish, humanity, the fire… something is happening right now. And the fire is protecting everything from whatever is happening right now. Nobody will be hurt, if they do not stomp each other to death in crowds. You need to stop them.”

“Alright. I believe you”, Torao nodded and grabbed his megaphone. He put it to his mouth and prepared his voice, only to yell: “Listen!!”

“Everyone, please calm down! The fire will not hurt you! Look around you, look at yourself, everything will be fine! Please, everyone calm down!” he repeated himself.

Minami felt some of the tension leave his body as he had transmitted his message. He watched, as more and more people stopped the headless, panicked running, and the seemingly endless stream of people ran dry.

Other firefighters joined in and repeated the message as well, and the crowd became calmer and calmer.

The flames died down… or rather they died up. Minami wasn’t sure if other people could see it, but it was like the flames were lifted up and disappeared into the sky rather than becoming smaller and disappearing.

And then they were gone.

Minami felt… empty. It was as if there had been a constant presence inside him for years, a drive, not always one to agree with, but it had grown on him. Gone was the heat and the urge to burn, gone was the voice that sang the most wonderful songs to him.

He had been friends with fire, and now it had burned out.

 _He_ had burned out.

“Oh”, he whispered to himself.

“Minami?”, Torao turned towards him and let the megaphone sink. He seemed out of his work mode and more like a private Torao that was trying to pay attention to him. But his efforts were barely noticed by Minami. He was busy focusing on himself.

“It’s gone”, Minami said slowly, as if to make himself realise. “The fire is… it’s gone.”

“Yes, it vanished a moment ag—"

“Not that, Midou-san”, he shook his head. “ _My_ fire is gone.”

“ _Your_ fire!?”, he sounded surprised. “You mean like… You can’t any longer… feel it?”

It was obvious that he had no idea what he was saying, but Minami wasn’t in the mood to tease him for it.

The gaping hole in his soul began to fill with loss, and Minami felt tears as hot as what they were mourning pool behind his eyes.

He pulled himself together. This was no place to cry. 

Minami tried searching for others, for the calls of fire that he had usually felt all the time, so often that mostly they had become something to take note of unconsciously. 

To no avail. 

In the silence he noticed how loud his world had been. How colourful and lively. 

“Gone…”, he had a hard time grasping it. 

“...Minami”, Torao sounded like he wanted to say something, or do something, and Minami didn’t know how he would react if Torao did do something at this point in time. But he wasn’t meant to find out, because Torao got distracted by something.

“Y-yes?”, he said. He was apparently talking to someone. Ah, the headpiece again, Minami realised through his haze of grief and emptiness. He must be talking to his co-workers, or his boss.

Minami stole a look at the crowd. He spotted some familiar faces, Burnish, looking empty, as if an essence of life had been taken from them.

“...their fire is gone”, Torao repeated Minami’s words. “I think… the fire of the Burnish is just… gone.”

Minami’s eyes widened. He wasn’t the only one…? So that was what was going on in the crowds. The fire that had made everyone burn had taken their fire away from them. Was it temporary? Would everything return to normal soon? Something told him that that wouldn’t be the case.

So this was what it had felt like before he had burned for the first time. Before his life had taken a turn that let him end up in the inner ring, sleeping under a weird pharmacist’s roof with two not-yet adults, and becoming a musician that could give hope to other people of similar fate.

He could barely remember what life had been like without burning. He didn’t know if he could go back to it.

In the crowd he searched for that familiar mop of green hair. 

He found Yamato leaning against a wall, one hand clutching the fabric of his shirt above where his heart was. Or no… it wasn’t his heart he was desperately clawing at, trying to find one last trace, a hint that it was still _there_. It was where something else had been and was gone now. 

Yamato looked up and their eyes met in a silent understanding. 

They weren’t Burnish anymore. 

“Fire killed with fire, huh…”, Minami said tonelessly. He felt numb. Where were Tamaki and Haruka…? Were they okay, or were they feeling similar to him? Would they be okay?

“...boss, what should we do?”, Torao asked into his earpiece.

He stayed silent for a while, apparently listening to orders. Then he asked. “Yes?”

Another moment of silence. Minami thought about reaching out to touch Torao. For support, comfort, or something else. He wasn’t sure what it was that made him want to reach out, but he knew that his despair was what prevented him from following through with it.

“...sure.” Torao replied. It sounded final. He loudly sucked in air, as if to prepare for something, and then turned to Minami. “Shall we get off the truck, Minami?”

“Alright”, Minami followed Torao’s lead and climbed down the truck. He finally felt firm ground under his feet again. The words came easily and calmly, though inside he felt a storm brewing. “Midou-san… I believe it is time to part ways again.”

“Yeah”, Torao nodded. “See ya.”

As he walked away from him again, Minami felt relieved, unlike last time. This time it really was the best possible outcome for their meeting. He couldn’t handle anything else right now. They all needed a break.

He turned away as well and trotted towards Yamato, who in the meantime had managed to stand upright without the aid of the wall. “Let us go home, Nikaido-san.”

He figured if they weren’t Burnish anymore it didn’t matter if anyone heard his name. 

Yamato nodded without protesting and they made their way back to the inner ring, silent understanding about their situation still not hitting deep enough to truly grasp. 

Things changed, now that they weren’t considered walking fire hazards anymore. Suddenly people cared about them, and the voices people who had already cared about them before got louder. There were still many who mistrusted them, but their calls for further discrimination of former Burnish came to nothing when the former Burnish themselves founded a political party under the leadership of the former Burnish Orikasa Yukito and raised their own voices. 

Quickly they had negotiated that neither of the Burnish Discrimination Laws, as the various rules limiting Burnish to a life in the inner and outer circle imprisoned in the middle of Shotokyo, as well as the horrid labour laws and the unfair law of tenancy were called now, wouldn’t apply to former Burnish anymore. Furthermore they would all be abolished in the near future, and anti-discrimination laws would put into place, to ensure the seamless reintegration of former Burnish into society. 

The next goal of the party would be insurance and then the remodelling of the inner ring, where most of the former Burnish still lived, and that would stay an own district of Shotokyo. 

Minami was glad that someone was standing up for their rights when nobody else was able to help them. He had never personally met Orikasa Yukito, or at least he hadn’t noticed, though he doubted it was possible to not notice that man. It was impressive, how he stayed calm and collected, yet still pulled in the attention. All eyes were on him when he spoke and everything he did somehow looked graceful.

Even when someone decided it would be funny to set his speaker’s desk on fire while he was giving a speech, he swiftly recovered from it and showed a strand of his hair that had been charred from the attack.

“We’re people like you all”, he had said then. “We hurt. When fire comes near us our skin burns. It wasn’t always like this. This is new for us as well. Some of us have been Burnish since we were children, and some, even though they weren’t children, have been for the majority of their lives. We need to learn to adjust to this new life and as much as it pains all of us to be dependent on you, it is a fact. We need your support more than ever.”

Minami knew what he meant, when he heard it. None of them wanted the help of the people who had shunned and mistreated them for years, no decades. It wasn’t like he was going back to his family, even though he had received a letter from his mother via the newly established inner ring postal service.

Family was something else to him. The pharmacy – now actually a pharmacy, legally opened in the inner ring – was the place where his family lived, and where his family visited to get medicine. Now that they didn’t possess self-healing abilities anymore, they actually needed medicine from time to time.

Tamaki too had gone through the first cold of his life (“What a healthy young kid he must have been”, Minami had joked. Haruka had just snorted. “Probably came from him eating dirt as a baby or something.”) and had complained endlessly, but at least he didn’t have to work in the factory anymore.

The younger Burnish that had never received a high school education because they were pulled out of the education system were being educated in special facilities that were meant to get them to a similar standing as a high-school graduate within about a year. It was hard on them, but they were both doing their best. Minami had the silent suspicion that they were meeting up with their friend from Burning Rescue to study, and that they were keeping it a secret from him in consideration of his relationship with Torao. Very sweet of them, really, but unnecessary. He would be fine, even if he knew that they were having fun with their non-ex-Burnish friend.

Yamato brought home chocolate.

It wasn’t unusual for Yamato to bring special food or something like it home, but he had never brought chocolate before, and it wasn’t yet on the market again when Haruka and Tamaki had been children. Before the Great World Burn chocolate had been a normal product, but many things almost went extinct in that catastrophe, so they were very hard to get.

Now Yamato brought home some chocolate and told them to eat it.

They were wary of it at first, poking at it, until it melted. Haruka was the first to try it, licking a bit of melted chocolate from his finger.

His eyes widened.

“Tamaki”, he said. “You can’t have this.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s bad. Don’t eat any of it. Give it to me instead.”

But Tamaki saw through the lie, Haruka wasn’t very good at it when it came to food and broke off a piece and popped it into his mouth.

His reaction was fantastic. He really looked like he had just seen paradise.

And for Tamaki that might have actually been true – he loved sweet things a lot.

Minami was looking forward to bringing him to a supermarket once they had enough money. Heat detectors were no more, so they could just… walk into there and get food.

A wild concept, to all of them, except Yamato, who had always gone to one certain family run supermarket in the heart of Shotokyo, one that couldn’t afford heat detectors.

Both Tamaki and Haruka turned out to be sweets monsters, and they begged Yamato to bring more next time he went to Shotokyo.

The old man was definitely enjoying the attention but tried keeping it down. It didn’t work well, especially when he arrived with new sweets the next day. And the day after that.

But it was good. They were enjoying life and distracting themselves from the loss. Maybe for them it wasn’t as intense, Minami thought as he looked at his guitar. He hadn’t touched it in a while.

He knew that something would be different with many of his songs missing. It ripped a hole into his repertoire. He longed for the comfort that special music used to give him, yet he didn’t dare attempt trying to sing it from memory, in danger of ruining it, not only for himself but also for the others.

Yet he couldn’t just stop working. Of course rebuilding the world into a place that accepted them was work as well, but he also needed money other than the welfare the government offered them for the beginning and Tamaki and Haruka’s schooldays.

He took a deep breath and took the guitar.

He knew exactly where he had to go.

The fountain was unchanged. Of course it was, the earthquakes hadn’t affected this part of the city much, and even if they had, it wouldn’t have made a difference, because everything would be repaired overnight.

Still, the bricks warm from the sun in one place and cool from the water in another were comforting to him.

Here he could sing, here he could let out some of these artistic urges that had been tormenting his conscience for the last weeks. The question of whether he could actually sing without being Burnish had been pressing, but he was over it.

He was still Minami the Musician, Burnish or not.

So he opened the guitar case for people to be able to give him some change and began to sing.

Song after song, old ones and a few new ones that he couldn’t resist writing, he just… sang.

He regretted not having done this earlier. It was so easy after all. Music was Minami and Minami was music, no matter any other identities. Of course part of his music was lost, but he could just make new ones, where was the problem? He would get over this, easy. Everything would be fine.

Some money landed in his case, and he managed his first completely honest smile since the fire that had burned away a part of him.

Another song and his voice was growing tired. Not singing for this long took its toll on him after all.

Another and his fingers began feeling numb.

Another… his last one for now. He needed a break.

It was nearing its end when someone stepped closer towards him.

Minami ended the song, the lyrics one of those new creations, born from the last month’s overwhelming situation. 

He looked up and spotted a familiar figure in front of him. 

“Midou-san”, he said. “What a pleasant surprise.”

There was no sarcasm in his voice. 

“I liked it better when you called me by my first name, actually”, Torao replied.

Minami smiled. He could allow it now. “Alright, Torao-san”, he said. “What a pleasant surprise.”

He took a step back and leaned his guitar on the brick-built fountain wall. Then he hoisted himself up and let his legs swing and kick the air. He looked at Torao expectantly, his head tilted to the side slightly, waiting for the other to say something. 

Torao followed him and sat down next to him.

“So… how you doing?”, he asked.

“I am managing”, Minami said. “We all are. Things are getting better slowly. We might be able to move into a new place in a few weeks. Tamaki and Haruka will receive their high school education and I am hoping to send them to university. And I am singing, as always. Less songs of course. Half of me has turned silent.”

He shook his head to get the negative thoughts away from his mind. 

“What about you?”, he asked. “Has your little task force become obsolete?”

“Well…”, Torao crossed his arms, and Minami inevitably had to look at them. Firefighter arms… He liked them. “Not necessarily? Sure, we’re getting less deployments due to random fires, but you know. People still need help and if they call, we’ll answer!”

Minami felt reassured seeing Torao be _Torao_ like this. His grin was healing, in a way.

“That is good to hear”, he said. The small talk was beginning to feel a little forced. He didn’t know how to continue the conversation. Should he ask something else…?

“Yup. But more importantly…”, Torao turned towards him with a more serious expression. “Minami?”

“Yes? What is it?”

“I love you, please go out with me.”

What?

“...Torao-san, I—", Minami evaded Torao’s intense look. His fingers were suddenly way more interesting, and they didn’t make him blush. Double better than looking at Torao.

“Minami!”, he said and his hands into his. He forced him to look at him. He was serious about this. Very serious. “And if you say no… I’m gonna have to leave the path of the hero and become a villain that steals you away.”

“Torao-san”, Minami said, woken up from his unsure state. He looked him directly into the eyes. “Are you serious right now? Because I hope you do not mean that line. To be perfectly honest, it made me feel a bit queasy. I believe I can taste some bile in my mouth.”

“R-really!?”, he turned away from him, never letting go of his hands. “Damn, Momo said it would work for sure.”

“Well, apparently your Momo-san was incorrect”, Minami said. “Though, Midou-san?”

“Y-yeah?”

“What would you have done had I actually said no? How would your path of a villain have looked like?”, Minami had to try very hard to not laugh at the image of Torao stealing candy bars from shops and tripping up children playing chase in the streets in an effort to become a villain. 

“I… didn’t think that far. But I’m sure I would’ve come up with something!”, he nodded. “As long as it meant I could stay at your side.”

His earnestness was… endearing, Minami had to admit.

Torao seemed to realise something. “Wait a sec, so what is it now?”

Minami squeezed Torao’s hand in his. “While I would not yet speak of feelings as strong as ‘love’ yet, I do tremendously enjoy your company”, he said. “I like you, Torao-san. So, yes, I would like to go out with you. Just spare us both the embarrassment and refrain from such lines in the future, will you?”

Torao’s eyes widened almost comically.

“Yes!”, he nodded again. “I promi— I’ll do my best!”

Minami let go of Torao’s hands and took his guitar again. “Well, Torao-san”, he said and threw a wink into Torao’s direction. “As my new boyfriend, how about you can wish for a song?”

“Really? Cool”, he also stood up from the fountain wall and returned to the position of a member of his passer-by audience in front of him. “Then…”

He thought for a moment. “...how about the song you played that night?”

Minami’s grip on the guitar loosened and he let it sink. “That song, huh…”, he mumbled. “I am afraid I cannot play it anymore.”

“You can’t? Why not?”

“It was a Burnish song. It came from within me, where the fire resided. It prompted melody and lyrics, and I sang according to it as my conductor. Now that it is gone…”

“Oh, I see…”, Torao looked disappointed. Minami was too. 

“I loved those songs”, Minami said, and his heart squeezed painfully at the memories. “I am sure that I could replicate some of it from memory, but the immediate magic of it is gone forever. If only I could have recorded it somehow…”

Torao seemed to be thinking again.

“...wait”, he said. “Wait! Minami!”

The hands on his shoulders were strong, but not hurting. Still, Minami had to hold on to his guitar, so he didn’t drop it from the surprise of being grabbed by Torao. 

“Yes? What is it now?”

“Heh”, Torao grinned at him again. “What if I told you that your performance that night was indeed recorded?”

“Are you ready?”, Minami asked.

A look over his shoulder confirmed that Torao _was_.

He was dressed fancier than usual, and on top of the determined expression on his face he was carrying a giftbag.

“Then…”, Minami inhaled deeply and stepped into the house that had once been very familiar to him.

The woman that stood in the hallway to greet him had become a stranger to him. He hadn’t planned on reconnecting with her, but she had reached out to him. It was no wonder, after his booming success with what many people called “Burnish Music”, music modelled after what he had played when he had still been Burnish, played from memory and fresh inspiration. It gave comfort and a sense of belonging to former Burnish and helped the others understand the Burnish a little better.

He still hadn’t wanted to answer, but all of his friends and his boyfriend had talked him into at least going to visit her once.

So he was here now, Torao in tow.

“Hello mother”, he said. “I have someone I would like you to meet.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah this was it. What a monster of a fic, but thank you for reading all the way to the end!
> 
> I hope you'll also read [Shion's fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23578129) that is the whole story from Torao's perspective (and a whole lot more lighthearted than mine) if you haven't done so already. 
> 
> Some fun facts to end this: The only characters neither of us mentioned in our fics are Sougo, Riku and Ryuu, but of course we thought of them too! Sougo is working as a TA at the newly established education establishments, Riku works for a different department of the firefighters (in a job where he doesn't have to physically work, Tenn made sure of that), and Ryuu is a news anchor! 
> 
> Follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/eins_kai).
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> -Kai

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Craving Burning Lotós: Torao-hen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23578129) by [ShionsTear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShionsTear/pseuds/ShionsTear)




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